BIO
Dimitri Reyes is a Puerto-Vegan educator, writer, artist, and community organizer from Newark, New Jersey. He is the recipient of the SLICE Magazine's 2017 Bridging the Gap Award for Emerging Poets and a finalist for the Arcturus Poetry Prize by the Chicago Review of Books. Dimitri is a candidate in the Rutgers- Newark MFA program and his poetry is published or forthcoming in The Acentos Review, Anomaly, Hawai'i Review, Kweli, and others.
You can find him on Instagram @dimitri__reyes and on his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/dimitrireyespoet
On development
It's on fire out there & I don’t feel like writing
poetry.
There’s so many people. I’m speaking to my
self more than usual. I’m sweating in this borrowed office
with the window closed & the A/C on. I’m not reading,
I’m simply pretending. When you look out my window
do you see any of this getting better? Don’t tell me
the buildings are erecting themselves larger, or the city’s
floors
got themselves polished enough to eat off of.
The sign says you can
eat here if you could afford a plate
& they just got rid of poverty last night now I’ve been
demoted.
Problems don’t go away, just simply shuffled around
now it's just me surrounded by a bunch of different you’s.
Am I still sick for disliking progress? I enjoy the love
but it’s like my nostrils barely skim the surface in an
audience of me.
I’m pruning skin in a bathtub. In a streetsmart bathbomb
solution.
I have two hands, one to paddle and another that paints
the red and white stripes on my face. I’m a blue canvas
with a star over my eye singing Que bonita Bandera.
& I bring others with me because my mother told me to
but on the inside I fear their weight is too much
for me when I try to cross the river:
the city tied around my ankles.